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MARYAM WAS MY FRIEND. ISRAEL KILLED HER AND FOUR OTHER GAZA
JOURNALISTS  
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Ruwaida Amer
August 27, 2025
+972 Magazine
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_ After the airstrike on Nasser Hospital, our plea is ever more
urgent: Palestinian reporters need international protection now, or
Gaza's voice will be silenced. Since October 2023, Israel has killed
at least 230 journalists in the Gaza Strip... _

Maryam Abu Daqqa, Oct. 8, 2020, Photo courtesy of the Abu Daqqa
family / +972 Magazine

 

Maryam Abu Daqqa was my friend. She was a photojournalist
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Monday, she was killed by the Israeli army in a “double tap”
attack
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Nasser Hospital, along with four other journalists. She was 32 years
old.

I first met Maryam in 2015 during a photography course in the Italian
center in Gaza City, where she was one of the trainees. I was drawn to
her energy. I remember thinking how quickly she spoke, as if she had
more ideas than time to express them.

She came from Abasan, east of Khan Younis, an agricultural town famous
for its fruits, vegetables, and delicious cuisine. Whenever I reported
on farming there, I knew I could turn to her. She was always ready to
help, and her photos of the village and its people never failed to
inspire me.

At first, I didn’t know that Maryam was a mother. One day before the
war, while I was working in Abasan, I heard a boy call out to her:
“Mom!” I was surprised. She laughed and introduced me to her son.
“This is Ghaith,” she said proudly. “He is my man, and he will
protect me when he grows up.” She told me all of her work was for
him.

Since the war began, I had seen Maryam many times in the field. We
always greeted each other and made sure we were both okay, but we
didn’t speak much.  We were always tired and stressed. The only
moments we had to truly catch up were at hospitals in Khan Younis,
where she often came to report.

I remember meeting her during Israel’s May 2024 offensive on Rafah
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cameraman was forced to flee north to Deir al-Balah, leaving me to
film alone on my phone. Maryam appeared in the ICU at the European
Hospital, where I was interviewing an American doctor. Seeing me
struggle with my camera, she immediately helped me adjust the settings
and offered a few tips. She looked exhausted, and could hardly walk.
It was a side of her I wasn’t used to seeing.

 
Palestinians bid farewell to the journalists killed in an Israeli
airstrike outside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern
Gaza Strip, Aug. 25, 2025. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90  //  +972
Magazine)
Before she left, I hugged her and asked her to be careful. I was
scared for her; I knew she had been working in the dangerous eastern
areas of Khan Younis only weeks earlier. The last time I saw her was
in April, at Nasser Hospital — the very place where, months later,
she would be killed by the Israeli army.

On the day Maryam was killed along with 19 others in the attack on the
hospital, I was nearby with my family in Khan Younis refugee camp. A
deafening blast shook the ground. My mother suggested it might have
been a house that was hit, but when I finally found an internet signal
and checked the news, the truth became clear. The grief and disbelief
were overwhelming.

I thought of her son, Ghaith, the boy she once called her protector,
who she cared for so much. I thought of her father, to whom she had
donated a kidney to save his life. I thought of my friend; bold,
adventurous, always caring for others.

NO WORDS CAN CAPTURE WHAT WE FEEL

Since October 2023, Israel has killed at least 230 journalists
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journalists than were killed worldwide in the previous three
years, according
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the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the past month alone, 11
Gazan journalists have been killed in Israeli strikes, Maryam among
them.  

On August 10, five journalists were killed when the Israeli army
targeted a journalists’ tent just outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza
City. That day, as I scrolled through my phone for any news of a
ceasefire, messages began to arrive from colleagues abroad checking on
me, asking if I was okay. Alarmed, I turned to the news groups, which
were flooded with initial reports of the attack. 

 
A Palestinian journalist mourns Anas Al-Sharif and his other
colleagues after they were killed in the same Israeli strike, in Gaza
City, Aug. 11, 2025. (Yousef Zaanoun/Activestills  //  +972
Magazine)
Among the six names mentioned, one caught me: Anas Al-Sharif
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not a close friend of Anas, having spoken to him only a few times
about news coming from northern Gaza, but I felt that I knew him well
through watching his reports. 

Though he had been an on-screen reporter for less than two years,
Anas’ presence had left an indelible mark. A 28-year-old husband and
father of two, Anas roamed tirelessly through northern Gaza, capturing
the voices of residents and documenting the unfolding genocide with
unflinching honesty. Even after losing
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father to an Israeli airstrike in December 2023, he refused to abandon
the mission of telling the truth while enduring the same deprivation
as his neighbors.

Indeed, every journalist in Gaza over the past two years has faced
hunger, displacement, and the loss of their homes and family
members,  all while trying to relay Gaza’s raw reality to the
world. I too have spent long hours in the streets without shelter. My
sick mother, still struggling to recover from spinal surgery, walks
beside me and my sister as we search for somewhere, anywhere, to take
refuge.

I love my job as a journalist, along with my work as a teacher, yet I
am devastated and terrified. It’s been more than 680 days of
continuous work, with constant internet outages, no proper
electricity, no safe shelter, and no transportation. I’ve continued
to report since the beginning of the war because I believe in its
mission, but I do it knowing that every day could very well be my
last. No words can capture what we feel as journalists with the
successive loss of colleagues.

Why is Israel targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza? Simple. We
are the only ones able to document and transmit what is actually
happening on the ground. Every image, every testimony, every broadcast
we produce pierces through the wall of Israel’s official narrative.
That makes us dangerous: by recording the displacement
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relentless bombardment
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expose Israel’s actions to the world.

 
The site of an Israeli airstrike at the Nasser Hospital in Khan
Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Aug. 25, 2025. (Abed Rahim
Khatib/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
And so, we are deliberately attacked. Cameras are treated as weapons,
and those who hold them as combatants. Our very presence threatens
Israel’s ability to sustain its genocidal path — which is why it
is doing everything it can to snuff us out.

A DESPERATE NEED FOR PROTECTION

Earlier this month, after two years of pressure by international press
bodies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
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Israel would allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza in order to
witness “Israel’s humanitarian efforts” and “civilian protests
against Hamas.” With no details or timeline, it’s hard not to see
this as yet another lie. But even if the international press was
allowed free and unfettered access to the Strip, what good would it be
if Palestinian journalists in Gaza remain unprotected?

We are tired of working continuously for two years without rest or
safety, inhabiting a constant state of anxiety about being killed at
any time. And while we demand that our international colleagues enter
Gaza to convey its brutal reality to the world, we know their
reporting will not differ from what we have already documented.

When a CNN journalist accompanied a Jordanian plane dropping aid over
Gaza this month, and saw the enclave from the plane’s window,
he described
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“sweeping view of what two years of Israeli bombardment has done …
utter devastation across vast areas of the Gaza Strip, a shocking
desert of ruins.” This is what we have been saying from the ground
for almost two years: Israel’s destruction of Gaza is massive, and
it will only continue without an end to the war.

When I was 9 years old, my house in the Khan Younis refugee camp
was destroyed by an Israeli bulldozer.
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image did not leave my mind. And when I saw journalists working to
convey what happened to my home to the world, I decided I wanted to
become one, too. 

I believe that journalists have immense value, but in Gaza, they are
killed in front of the world and no one takes action. We fear losing
more of our colleagues, and we desperately need international
protection — before Israel succeeds in silencing Gaza’s voice.

_[RUWAIDA AMER is a freelance journalist from Khan Younis.]_
 

_OUR TEAM HAS BEEN DEVASTATED BY THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF THIS LATEST
WAR. THE WORLD IS REELING FROM ISRAEL’S UNPRECEDENTED ONSLAUGHT ON
GAZA, INFLICTING MASS DEVASTATION AND DEATH UPON BESIEGED
PALESTINIANS, AS WELL AS THE ATROCIOUS ATTACK AND KIDNAPPINGS BY HAMAS
IN ISRAEL ON OCTOBER 7. OUR HEARTS ARE WITH ALL THE PEOPLE AND
COMMUNITIES FACING THIS VIOLENCE._

_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to
engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed
by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on
Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is
ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence
Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies._

_This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the
past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and
militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized
siege on Gaza._

_We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need
your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity
of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians
and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives._

_Can we count on your support? +972 Magazine is a leading media voice
of this movement, a desperately needed platform where Palestinian and
Israeli journalists, activists, and thinkers can report on and analyze
what is happening, guided by humanism, equality, and justice. Join us.
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* Palestinian journalists
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* Gaza
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Khan Younis
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* Israeli airstrikes
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* Israeli bombing
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Genocide
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* war crimes
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* Ceasefire
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* U.S.-Israel military aid
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* Nasser Hospital
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* Humanitarian Aid
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* starvation
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* Donald Trump
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